Are you ready for some Stanley Cup hockey?  Eh?  How does it feel to potentially be 60 hockey-minutes away from a championship?  Is it so close you can taste it?  Can you imagine drinking from that hefty, nickel-alloy mug and letting luxuriously extravagant champagne pour down the sides of your mouth and down your back and chest?  Billions of tiny bubbles exploding on your skin and tongue, like a fireworks celebration for the epidermis!

It could happen tonight, or it might have to wait until Wednesday.

I know this might sound painful to any die-hard fans, but I'm hoping for seven.  As much as it might bring me a tiny bit of masochistic joy to see Canucks fans stretched to the absolute limits of near cardiac arrest, this is not my reasoning for wanting this thing to go to seven.

No, I want this series to come back to Vancouver simply because hockey is better here.  Who can deny that games 1, 2 and 5 weren't immeasurably more entertaining and intense?  Put aside the fact that the Canucks happened to win those 3 games; they were all close fought battles, decided by 1 goal(often scored in the dwindling seconds or minutes of the game).

Even all of that blatant and shameful diving seemed to peter away in game 5.  It was still rampant in the first period, fairly evident(yet considerably subdued) in the second, and by the time the third period came around, these guys were way too focused on the game to consider falling to their knees for the sake of a two-minute man advantage.

The air in Boston must be infected.  What other explanation could there be?  Could the yankee hate actually fill the air and affect the play of these competitors?

I am certainly no scientist, and I doubt I could convince someone to take on the responsibility of trying to prove such an outlandish claim.  But it seems obvious that the Puritan colony of Boston is wrecking the sportsmanship of our beloved game.

I would love to say that Vancouver will stomp into Boston and destroy Tim Tam and the Slovakian giant tonight, but I just don't think that's going to happen.

But what do I know?  Anything can happen tonight.